Barton: Squeeze the lottery

But if I had to pick one, I’d go with the jerky. It might come in handy if I got a hole in the bottom of my shoe or, better still, someone got bitten by a poisonous snake and I had to perform emergency surgery, like they do in the movies, and I needed a bit of leathery material to keep the victim from biting off his or her tongue.

Since Georgia voters approved the state-run lottery in 1992, about $13 billion has gone into HOPE scholarships and pre-K programs. Last year, 256,000 students attended colleges in Georgia, courtesy of HOPE. More than a million students have benefitted from HOPE, including my kids.

The question is what HOPE will look like over the next five to 10 years. If you’re a parent with a child who hopes to go to college in a few years, you’re heavily invested in the answer — to the tune of $30,000 to $40,000 in future tuition expenses.

Georgia lawmakers, including State Sen. Buddy Carter, R-Pooler, are scrambling to find solutions to keep this extremely successful, merit-based scholarship program on solid financial footing. It’s not easy. The number of students who qualify and receive HOPE is soaring. Colleges keep jacking up tuition and fees.

But the number of lotttry players — or more specifically, the amount of money spent on tickets — has plateaued. In fact, after nearly two decades of constant growth, the Georgia Lottery’s total revenue declined in fiscal year 2011 by about $48 million.

Unless you’re Congress, you can’t spend money you don’t have. So what to do? One proposal is to turn HOPE from a merit-based program to a needs-based program. But that means breaking a key promise made to voters in 1993: If you vote “yes” on the lottery, then every child who gets good grades will get a scholarship.

It was a huge selling point. A time may come when irresistible forces compel HOPE to be means-tested (like Social Security at some point). But it should be the final option.

Another idea is to make scholarships proportional to how many lottery tickets are sold in an area. That’s great for Chatham County students. Chatham is a net “giver” — we spend more on tickets than we get back in scholarships. But suburban counties are net “takers” and would get hammered. So politically, this is non-starter.

Quick question: What portion of each $1 lottery ticket goes for education? Is it 75 cents? Or 50 cents? Or 35 cents?

Nope. It’s roughly a quarter.

So let’s squeeze the lottery. Raise the share that goes toward education by a nickel. Or even a few pennies. (Legally, it can go up to 35 cents.) Millions would gush into HOPE immediately.

Lottery officials have argued against this option. They say they would have to trim payouts, which means fewer players, eventually dooming the system.

But many states with lotteries return a greater percentage to the state than Georgia does. None have gone belly up. And who says you have to skim winnings? Why not take a few pennies out of the $230.9 million paid to convenience stores that sell tickets or the $142.5 million spent on administrative expenses last year?

State Sen. Jack Hill is suspicious of the lottery’s doomsday claim. He said as much to Savannahians at the State Capitol last month on Savannah-Chatham Day.

Hill, 67, chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee. He’s been in the Senate for 22 years and has balanced his share of budgets. He’s also a retired grocer. Thus he should know when something doesn’t smell right.

If senators Hill and Carter want to squeeze more money out of the lottery to keep HOPE alive, I’m with them. I’ll agree to buy tickets occasionally. But not the jerky.

Taking a chance on a million bucks is one thing. Tempting fate is another.